Chapter 11
The sun finally managed to pierce the thick layer of gray clouds covering S?o Paulo, but the pale morning light brought no warmth.
The city, which during the early hours of the morning had seemed like a sleeping monster, was now awakening with deafening fury.
The sound of engines, car horns, and hurried footsteps on the sidewalks formed a constant hum that made my head throb.
I had walked aimlessly until my legs finally gave out, stopping at some random public square, surrounded by tall, mirrored buildings that seemed to swallow me whole. I was sitting on a peeling wooden bench, huddled up, hugging my knees to try to contain the violent tremors shaking my body.
The night’s chill had seeped into my bones, but a new pain joined my physical torment: hunger.
My stomach growled loudly, a sharp, gnawing pain that made me double over with a muffled groan.
It was a familiar, old pain. During my childhood in the countryside of Ceará, hunger was a constant visitor, a ghost that sat at our table when money ran low and the parched earth yielded no fruit.
But there, in the sert?o, hunger was an honest struggle.
It was shared. When I went to sleep on an empty stomach, at least I had the mud roof of my house and the certainty that no one hated me.
There, hunger was the result of utter contempt and proof that I had been cast aside.
I watched the people hurrying through the square.
Men in suits and ties holding cups of steaming coffee, women in elegant coats and headphones, oblivious to the world.
The smell of buttered bread on the griddle and roasted coffee wafted from a bakery on the corner, invading my nostrils and making my mouth water painfully.
I closed my eyes, imagining the warmth of a sip of coffee. Just one sip.
I instinctively reached for the fabric of my dress, searching for a pocket that wasn’t there.
I didn’t have a single cent. I had no purse, no ID, not even a pair of shoes—I’d left the library barefoot.
I looked down at my bare feet, covered in mud, soot, and scabs of dried blood from the cuts I’d gotten walking on the asphalt.
The dark stains on my hands and the sleeves of my dress no longer seemed to be just Dona Eleonora’s blood; they seemed like the mark of a curse I would carry forever.
I felt the stares weighing down on me. A woman clutched her purse tighter to her body as she passed by my bench.
A municipal guard, on the other side of the square, looked in my direction with a frown, assessing whether I was a threat or just another visual nuisance in the cityscape.
I was the trash that Eduardo had swept out of his marble palace.
I want to go home.
The thought surged through me, pure and desperate, tearing at my chest. I didn’t want to go back to the mansion in Morumbi.
That place was a mausoleum of false promises, a minefield where my heart had been torn apart.
I wanted to return to the “middle of nowhere” in the Northeast, where I could feel the warmth of the sun on my skin, breathe in the sea air, and listen to the maids laughing in the resort hallways.
Life there was hard. My shifts lasted twelve hours, my feet ached by the end of the day, and the calluses on my hands were proof of my hard work.
I was invisible, pouring drinks for rich people who didn’t know my name.
Yet I had dignity and peace. I would lay my head on my narrow pillow in the dormitory and sleep with a clear conscience, knowing that the little I had was the fruit of my honest labor.
How could I have been so foolish as to believe I could belong in Eduardo’s world?
The price of my fairy tale was being exacted with interest in the form of blood and humiliation. I had traded my hard, honest life for a poisoned dream, and the punishment seemed endless.
I had no way to warn anyone, no one to ask for help, or to prove my innocence.
At any moment, the S?o Paulo police would issue an arrest warrant for me.
They would find me there, filthy, starving, and broken, and throw me into a cell for the rest of my life.
Eduardo… wouldn’t lift a finger. He would sleep soundly, believing that justice, as seen through his family’s eyes, had been served.
I buried my face in my stained hands, sobbing softly. The tears I thought had dried up fell again, hot and bitter.
My life before I met the rich man from S?o Paulo had been a daily struggle, a sea of hardships and deprivations.
Yet, sitting on that freezing park bench, surrounded by strangers and shivering from hunger and cold, I realized the cruelest truth of all: the rock bottom I had known was nothing compared to the abyss into which Eduardo Vasconcelos had thrown me.
Before, I had no money, but I had hope. At that moment, Eduardo had ripped both of those things away from me, leaving only an empty hole where my heart had once beaten. My life was going to get much, much worse, and there was no one in the world who could save me from myself.